“I just wish…”
“I just wish…” and coaching for when your brain tries to talk you out of what you want…
Hello! I am life and leadership coach Tarah Keech, and this is the Coach Well Lead Well blog! This is where you get to see inside the brain of an executive coach and leader as I coach my crazy smart clients, and myself, through burnout recovery, growth, goals, life, love, and all of the in-between.
All right, you guys, I've got some tough love. Are you ready?
This is tough love that I just gave myself, and I thought it might be tough love that you need too. I was feeling a little frustrated. There was a conversation where someone was… airing their grievances, let's call it that.
Do you guys know Seinfeld's Festivus tradition? That was never my show, but it was my husband's show, so the Seinfeld themes have woven their way into my life. We talk about the airing of grievances. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please Google that.
Back to today, this particular airing of grievances was crawling all over me. Man, my emotions were spiking. I noticed that I was feeling my shoulders tense up, and the back of my neck was getting tight, which meant that I was tense.
I was feeling defensive, and I knew that because my arm muscles were feeling really clenched, and they were close to my body, like that fighter stance. And then I was feeling really sad, almost like regret.
That's what it was. It was feeling regret that I hadn't been able to intervene or do a better job. That thought was causing that feeling. Okay. Those physical sensations were letting me know I was having these emotional experiences. The thoughts are pretty easily identified. The grievances were aired. I gave a statement in response, and then I took a little break to make myself an afternoon cup of coffee.
I knew as I was doing it that my afternoon cup of coffee was a way to buffer, to placate those emotions, or try to compensate for the negative feelings. I was seeking that caffeine to help bolster me so that I didn't have to feel the negative feeling anymore. This is another huge, beautiful cue that there's some thought work to do. And that you're probably ready to do it.
If you're avoiding it, you can identify and look at it. So here I am, looking at it and identifying it. I was still drinking my coffee, indulging a little bit, and letting that be okay. I was observing my following thoughts as I thought, “I'm buffering, what's really going on in my mind?”
This phrase came out, and I wanted to show it to you because it's something that I hear all the time. I was stirring my sugar and cream in the coffee, buffer on buffer on buffer. I was like, “I just wish…”
That phrase, right? “I just wish.” Now, a big part of my coaching is based on neurolinguistic programming. It's actually what I got my certification in. It's about the subtle art of how our words, our minds, and our words spoken impact how we see the world. They impact our experiences of other people and our experiences of ourselves. They're stitched together through this art of language.
When you think about that phrase, “I just wish,” there are a couple of things that could be happening, and I just want you to be aware that when you hear, “just,” there's actually a deeper want that's trying to be expressed. So when you hear yourself or others saying, “I just wish,” or, “I just want,” when we add, “just,” in our language and our thoughts, it's an attempt at minimizing the desire. There is something about that particular desire that cues the language parts of our brain: to qualify it, to make it a little bit less serious, a little bit further removed from reality. The use of the word, “just,” is calling for us to ignore it. If I say, “I just wish they would, I just wish it could, I just wish I would.” What we're acknowledging is that there's something that we really want, but it's in someone else's power.
Since it’s in someone else’s power, it's unlikely, so we should just not consider it. We should not take it as seriously. It's unlikely to happen. When you hear yourself say that, and when you hear others say it, go a little deeper there. What is it that you do want more of? In my coaching for myself in this instance, I wanted more openness, forgiveness, willingness to work towards peace, to work towards openness and transparency, and the things that I value.
I want my values to be lived more fully in these experiences. That's my work. This brief thought work showed me that my values were not in alignment with how I was behaving in these calls, that there were opportunities for me to exemplify those values in the next steps that I chose to take, and in future conversations with the way that I talk to others and the way that I guide the conversation.
“Just…” I want you to listen for it this week. Where are you using the word “just?” Where is your brain trying to protect you from having to think about what you really want? I guarantee that what your brain's trying to protect you from is the area of growth that you really are ready for and that you really do want.
This is the beautiful thing about coaching. A coach is here to help you take action, and make uncomfortable changes because you know that they are in alignment with what you want. Being ready and clear about those uncomfortable next steps can create the pivots, the changes in your life that you are hungry for. It doesn't have to happen in big fell swoops. It can happen in these micro steps and these micro pivots.
Listen to your, “just.” Let me know how it goes, and I'll write soon. Take care.
